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14th Street Tunnel shutdown (mtamaster edition)
The New York City Subway's 14th Street Tunnel, which carries the BMT Canarsie Line (serving the L''' train) under the East River in New York City, is proposed to be closed from April 2019 to July 2020 to allow for necessary and extensive repairs after it was flooded and severely damaged during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Two options were proposed in 2016: a three-year construction period where one tube at a time would be closed or an 18-month closure where both tubes would be worked on simultaneously. Among the public, the 18-month closure, which was later reduced to 15 months, was the more popular option. To accommodate displaced passengers, new or expanded bus, subway, and ferry service will be added. The shutdown plan has been criticized by riders who use the '''L train and people living along or near 14th Street in Manhattan. Background In October 2012, Hurricane Sandy caused severe damage to New York City, and many subway tunnels were inundated with floodwater. The subway opened with limited service two days after the storm and was running at 80 percent capacity within five days; however, some infrastructure needed years of repair. A year after the storm, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which operates the New York City Subway, said that Hurricane Sandy "was unprecedented in terms of the amount of damage that we were seeing throughout the system." The storm flooded ten of the system's 15 underwater tunnels, many subway lines and yards, and completely destroyed a portion of the IND Rockaway Line in Queens, as well as much of the South Ferry terminal at Manhattan's southern tip. Reconstruction required many weekend closures on several lines and long-term closures on the Greenpoint Tunnel, Montague Street Tunnel, Schermerhorn Street tunnel, Rockaway Line, and the South Ferry station. A long-term closure was planned for the 14th Street Tunnel because it was the tunnel most significantly damaged by the storm surge. Moreover, the 14th Street Tunnel dates from 1924; thus its equipment was already 88 years old when Hurricane Sandy occurred. Planning Closure options In January 2016, the Canarsie Line between Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan was proposed for either of two shutdown options. One option involved shuttering the entire segment for eighteen months. The other option would allow the MTA to operate two segments of track for three years: a single-track segment between Bedford and Eighth Avenues with a capacity of 5 trains per hour per direction, and regular service between Lorimer Street and Rockaway Parkway. For both options, the Third Avenue station would be closed and new exits and elevators at the First Avenue and Bedford Avenue stations would be added. The renovations would cost between $800 million and $1 billion; as of July 2018, the project budget includes $926 million. During the shutdown, workers would replace damaged communications, power and signal wires, third rails and tracks, duct banks, pump rooms, circuit breaker houses, tunnel lighting, concrete lining, and fire protection systems. Three new electric substations would provide more power to run more trains during rush hours. Community meetings were held to determine which of the two options would be better. In an internal assessment, the MTA concluded that four out of five L train riders would be less impacted by the full-closure option compared to the partial-closure option. Additionally, the single-track option would result in severe overcrowding at First and Bedford Avenues. In July 2016, it was announced that the MTA had chosen the 18-month full closure option. Riders reacted with both disappointment over the closure, and relief that the service disruption would be shorter. The New York Post described the closure with the headline, "2019 is the year Williamsburg dies." This option was selected after a poll revealed that 77 percent of L train riders preferred the 18-month closure option. The MTA named Judlau Contracting and TC Electric as the project's contractors on April 3, 2017, at which time the duration of the shutdown was shortened to 15 months. It offered the contractors a $188,000-a-day bonus for completing work up to 60 days early, as well as a $15 million bonus for completing the project on time; the MTA also stipulated that the companies would need to pay a fine of $410,000 for each day that work is delayed past the 15-month deadline. The joint venture is also responsible for renovating the First Avenue and Bedford Avenue stations during the shutdown, as well as adding platform screen doors to the Third Avenue station. According to a July 2018 report, construction was supposed to be "substantially completed" by November 2020. Initial mitigation plans The MTA indicated that during the shutdown, the L route would only have a frequency of ten trains per hour between Bedford Avenue and Rockaway Parkway, because of severely constrained terminal capacity at Bedford Avenue. In mid-2016, the MTA devised preliminary mitigation plans. It proposed additional shuttle bus, ferry, and subway service, extending G trains from four cars to eight, and running the M to Midtown Manhattan daily. A ferry route between Williamsburg and East Village, Manhattan, would be instituted; the M14A and M14D buses might be converted to Select Bus Service; and dedicated bus lanes would be placed on crosstown corridors in Manhattan. Preliminary documents also proposed that the four toll-free East River bridges between Manhattan and Long Island (the Queensboro, Williamsburg, Manhattan, and Brooklyn Bridges) might gain a high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) restriction of at least three passengers per vehicle during rush hours. In December 2017, the MTA and the New York City Department of Transportation released a more concrete mitigation plan, based on projections that 80% of riders would transfer to other subway services to get to Manhattan, while 15% would use buses. An HOV restriction on the Williamsburg Bridge during rush hours would allow it to accommodate three SBS routes between Brooklyn and Manhattan. Route "L1" (named M14L by MTA) would stretch from Union Square, Manhattan, to the Grand Street station in Brooklyn; "L2" (named B39 by MTA) would connect SoHo, Manhattan to the Grand Street station; and "L3" (named B19 by MTA) would go from SoHo to Bedford Avenue. In addition, 14th Street between Third and Ninth Avenues would be converted into a bus-only corridor during rush hours to accommodate an SBS route across 14th Street, connecting to a ferry route at Stuyvesant Cove Park near 23rd Street. The mitigation plan also entailed improvements to six subway stations, new entrances at two stations, enlarged crosswalks near these subway stations, longer G and C trains, increased service on the G, J/Z and M, and a weekend extension of the M train to Queens Plaza. Finally, the plan included an expansion of New York City's privately-operated bike share system, Citi Bike, as well as upgrades to bike lanes on Brooklyn's Grand Street and a pair of crosstown bike lanes on 12th and 13th Streets. Some subway entrances on each of the affected routes would also be reopened. On December 14, 2017, members of the New York City Council held a hearing in which they asked the MTA head and NYCDOT Commissioner over the shutdown. The central question was whether the MTA could complete repairs by the July 2020 deadline. It was projected that during the shutdown, the 14th Street buses would become the most-used bus corridor in the city, and that 70 buses in each direction would travel across the Williamsburg Bridge every hour. As a result, Lower Manhattan politicians worried that the narrow streets in the area would not be able to accommodate the high-capacity buses. Modified mitigation plans In June 2018, as part of a lawsuit settlement, the MTA agreed to install elevators at the Sixth Avenue station and conduct an environmental impact study on the Canarsie Tunnel rehabilitation's effects. The city also considered turning 14th Street into an exclusive busway 17 hours a day during all days of the week, and changed its initial plans for a two-way bike lane on 13th Street to two separate bike lanes on 12th and 13th Streets. When the 14th Street busway is enforced during the shutdown, the only vehicles that could use the busway would be buses, trucks making deliveries on 14th Street, emergency and Access-A-Ride vehicles, and local traffic traveling for no more than one block. Separately, the MTA revised contingency plans so that there would be four SBS routes. They included the already-planned L1 Union Square–Grand Street, L2 SoHo–Grand Street, and L3 SoHo–Bedford Avenue routes, as well as a new route L4 (known as L train SBS) between the Lower East Side and Bedford Avenue. The four routes combined would carry 17% of displaced L train riders, while subways would carry another 70% and other transport methods would make up the remaining 13%. Citi Bike announced plans to add 1,250 bikes and 2,500 bike-share docks during the shutdown. A private company also announced their intention to create a luxury "New L" shuttle van service during the shutdown. In July 2018, the MTA and NYCDOT announced that the M14 Select Bus Service route would be implemented by January 6, 2019, three months before the tunnel is set to shut down. A similar route, M14B started service on November 13, 2017. The M14B would be converted into SBS and operate between Chelsea at Tenth Avenue and Gansevoort Street. and Kips Bay at 23 Street and First Avenue. It would initially run with seven stops in each direction. Local service on the M14A and M14D would be retained with minor modifications. One or two weeks before the tunnel closes, the M14 SBS would be rerouted to Stuyvesant Cove. The M14A/D local and the M14B SBS would be able to serve a combined 84,000 passengers every hour, with a bus every two minutes during rush hours. Sidewalks on nearby streets would be widened, and temporary pedestrian plazas would be designated, to accommodate the new Select Bus Service routes. With the addition of new K''' service starting on April 30, 2018, plans were slightly revised to include many route increases and reroutes with affected lines, including the '''K. Proposed changes are as following: *'6' service would extend from Third Avenue-138th Street to Brooklyn Bridge during late nights, adopting the daytime terminal full-time. *'G' service is expected to run 480 ft cars displaced from the J/K/M/Z. *'J/Z' service may be modified to reflect decreases in frequency. *'K' and M''' service is expected to run increased frequencies, with the former having select trips via Sixth Avenue during rush hours. *Select '''U trains would be rerouted from the BMT Nassau Street to South Ferry on the IND Second Avenue line in order to allow additional trains to terminate at Broad Street. Likewise, select Y''' trains that terminate at South Ferry would be rerouted over the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn due to the low TPH at South Ferry terminal. The MTA also released additional details about headways on affected transit routes. The peak frequency of the G would be increased from eight trains per hour (TPH) to 15 TPH between Court Square and Bedford–Nostrand Avenues, and from 8 to 12 TPH south of Bedford–Nostrand Avenues. The '''K and M''''s combined peak frequency would be increased from 16 to 20 TPH between Myrtle Avenue and Manhattan, while the frequency of the '''J/Z and R trains would be decreased to accommodate the additional service running on the same tracks. Several other subway routes between Manhattan and Brooklyn or Queens would have additional off-peak service. For bus route headways, the combined peak frequency of the M14 variants would be increased from 25 buses per hour to 35, and the M39 bus across the Williamsburg Bridge would be rerouted to allow the L1 through L4 routes to run smoothly while operating on the Williamsburg Bridge. The L1 through L4 buses would provide a combined 80 buses per hour during peak hours. Headways on local bus routes in Brooklyn that would connect with the L shuttle buses, such as the B6, B32, B48, B57, B60, B62 and B103, would also be increased. The ferry service between Stuyvesant Cove and North 7th Street would run at a frequency of 8 trips per hour in each direction during rush hours. Proposed Headways